Dead Man's Grip

registration?’ Grace echoed.
    The lights changed and he drove on.
    ‘The licence plates on the car aren’t theirs, Roy. The driver may be old, but he has all his marbles, I’m told. Knew his registration number off by heart. Sounds like someone’s nicked his plates and replaced them with different ones.’
    ‘Where’s he come from?’ Grace asked, but he had a feeling he already knew the answer.
    ‘They’ve been in Brighton. They enjoy the sea air, apparently. Like to take their dog for a walk between the piers. It’s their regular constitutional. They have fish and chips at some place on the front.’
    ‘Yep, and let me guess where they parked. The Regency Square car park?’
    ‘Very good, Roy. Ever thought of going on Mastermind ?’
    ‘Once, when I had a brain that worked. So, give us their index that’s been stolen.’
    Branson wrote it down.
    Grace drove in silence for some moments, thinking about the killer with grudging admiration. Whoever you are, you are a smart bastard. What’s more, you clearly have a sense of humour. And just in case you don’t know, right at this moment I have a major sense-of-humour failure.
    His phone rang again. This time it was Nick Nicholl in MIR-1, sounding perplexed.
    ‘Chief, I’m coming back to you on the vehicle owner check you asked me to do, on Barry Simons.’
    ‘Thanks. What do you have, Nick?’
    ‘I’ve just spoken to him. I sent someone round to his house and they asked a neighbour who knew where he worked – and I got his mobile phone number from his company.’
    ‘Well done.’
    The Detective Constable sounded hesitant. ‘You asked me to check if it was him driving his car first east on King’s Road, then west past the junction between Kingsway and Boundary Road this morning? Index Golf Victor Zero Eight Whisky Delta X-Ray?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, he’s a bit baffled, chief. He and his wife are lying on a beach in Limassol in Cyprus at the moment. They’ve been there for nearly two weeks.’
    ‘Could anyone they know be driving this car while they’re away?’
    ‘No,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘They left it at the long-term car park at Gatwick Airport.’
    Grace pulled over to the side of the road and stopped sharply.
    ‘Nick, put a high-act marker on that index. Get on to the Divisional Intelligence Unit – I want to know every ANPR sighting from the day Barry Simons’s car arrived at Gatwick to now.’
    ‘To double-check, chief, index Golf Victor Zero Eight Whisky Delta X-Ray.’
    ‘Correct.’
    Grace switched on the car’s lights and siren, then turned to Glenn Branson.
    ‘We’re taking a ride to Shoreham.’
    ‘Want me to drive?’ Branson asked.
    Grace shook his head. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll be of more help to Tyler Chase alive.’

100
    Tooth sat in the Yaris in the parking lot behind the apartment block. The same cars were still here that had been here when he left to do his reconnaissance an hour ago. It was still the middle of the afternoon and maybe the lot would fill up when people came back from work. But it hadn’t filled up last time, six years ago. The windows of the apartment block didn’t look like they had been cleaned since then either. Maybe it was full of old people. Maybe they were all dead.
    He stared at the text that had come in and which had prompted his early return to the car. It said just one word: call.
    He removed the SIM card and, as he always did, burned it with his lighter until it was melted. He would throw it away later. Then he took one of the phones he had not yet used from his bag and dialled the number.
    Ricky Giordino answered on the first ring. ‘Yeah?’
    ‘You texted me to call.’
    ‘What the fuck took you so long, Mr Tooth?’
    Tooth did not reply.
    ‘You still there? Hello, Mr Tooth?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Listen to me. We’ve had another tragedy in our family and that woman, Mrs Chase, she’s the cause of it. My sister’s dead. I’m your client now, understand me? You’re doing this for me now. I want that woman’s pain to be so bad. I want pain she’s never going to forget, you with me?’
    ‘I’m doing what I can,’ Tooth replied.
    ‘Listen up, I didn’t pay you a million bucks to do what you can do. Understand? I paid you that money to do something more than that. Something different, right? Creative. Give me a big surprise. Blow me away. Show me you got balls!’
    ‘Balls,’ Tooth commented.
    ‘Yeah, you heard, balls. You’re going to bring